Return
by the ramblin rose
Summary: Rick/Lori/Shane, short. S1, Ep3 "Tell It to the Frogs." She believed he was dead. She hadn't done anything wrong, and Rick wanted her to know that.


**AN: This is in a series of "shorts" that I'm doing for entertainment value as I rewatch some episodes. Some of them are interpretations/rewrites of scenes that are in each episode. Some are scenes that never happened but could have in "imagination land". They aren't meant to be taken seriously and they aren't meant to be mind-blowing fic. They're just for entertainment value and allowing me to stretch my proverbial writing muscles. If you find any enjoyment in them at all, then I'm glad. If you don't, I apologize for wasting your time. They're "shorts" or "drabbles" or whatever you want to call them so I'm not worrying with how long they are. Some will be shorter, some will be longer.**

 **I own nothing from the Walking Dead.**

 **I hope that you enjoy! Let me know what you think!**

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Every time they returned from a run it was the same thing. Seeing everyone so gleefully reunited with their loved ones—wrapped up in the warm comfort of knowing that the ones they cared about were safe and returned to them—just ripped the scab off for Carl all over again. He knew that his father was gone. He'd mostly come to accept that, but the reunions always made it hard. They always reminded him that there was no happy reunion coming for him. Rick was gone and he wasn't coming back. Lori prepared herself, every time a group left, for the comforting that Carl was going to require of her when they returned. She just wasn't sure how long the need for that comfort was going to last.

Except this time was different.

Carl saw him before she did. She saw the expression on Carl's face. She saw the change in his demeanor. She saw the movements of his body that changed his stance to one that was preparing to run forward—all of that she saw before she ever saw Rick.

And when she saw Rick, her son running for him as fast as legs could carry him, Lori still wasn't sure that she was seeing him.

 _It was like seeing a ghost._

It wasn't the first time that she'd seen Rick. More than once she'd turned and thought that, out of the corner of her eye, she caught a glimpse of him standing somewhere near her. Every time she'd looked for him again, though, daring to think that maybe he'd somehow appeared, he'd been gone. It was just a memory vision. It was nothing more than her eyes and her mind playing tricks on her.

She almost thought it would be the same this time, too, until she felt his arms wrap around her. Her mind, no matter how badly it wanted to taunt her, wouldn't be capable of stirring up some phantom that was able to feel so real in her arms. It couldn't conjure a phantom that could feel so warm. So _alive_.

Rick was back.

Her husband was back. Carl's father was back. Her family was back together again. Made whole. She was no longer a mourning widow who was trying to over the loss of her husband—she was a _happily_ married woman. At least, she was as happily married as she'd ever been during the last few years.

All at once the guilt that she'd felt the first time she'd been with Shane returned. It churned up her insides and she fought an almost dizzying wave of nausea. She'd excused herself, during all this time, because Rick was dead. She'd lost him. She'd told herself that mourning him and denying herself the comforts of Shane's arms would do nothing. He was gone.

But all of that had been a lie.

Lori glanced at Shane—the man who had gotten her there with her son, the man who had seemed to so easily and quickly fit into her family unit once Rick was dead—and he smiled. He was Rick's best friend. His loyalty to Rick was what had brought him to help her. It was what had driven him to do anything and everything he had to do to make sure that she and Carl were safe. His loyalty to Rick was what had brought them together in the first place. His love for _Rick_.

And it was his love for Rick that had, in some ways, helped Lori to justify her relationship with Shane. Rick was gone, but he would approve of them. If she was going to move on? Rick would approve of her relationship with Shane. He wouldn't want her to mourn. He would want her to be taken care of—in every way possible—and he would think that Shane was a good man for her. He was a good man to father Carl.

Except Rick wasn't gone.

Shane was smiling, though, when he made eye contact with Lori. He understood. He didn't have to say anything, and neither did she, because he understood. He was happy to see that Rick was alive. He was pleased that his best friend had returned. He could take joy in Carl's excited reunion with his father.

He understood that they were over because the entire ground that their relationship—and now Lori was having a hard time even thinking of it as that, maybe because her guilt wanted her to forget it—had crumbled. She'd be forever grateful to him for all that he'd done and for all that he'd offered to do. She'd forever hold his friendship dear and he'd never cease to be important to her, but they couldn't be together.

She was a _happily_ married woman and her husband had returned to her.

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"Mom said you died," Carl said, a hint of pain in his voice.

Rick's chest caught at the words and at the suffering that he could imagine his son had endured. He'd thought, too, that they were dead. He'd held out hope, because he needed it to survive, that he'd find them again, but the world wasn't having any problem introducing doubt every step of the way.

Lori had believed him dead because she'd had no other option. He'd been unconscious, at least that much he knew was true, the last time that she'd seen him—if she'd seen him after he suffered the wounds—and since then the world had seemed to go belly up. If people died in the streets, unable to save themselves, and died in department stores from being overrun, how easy would it be to believe that someone who was barely hanging on to life had simply given up and crossed over?

It explained, for Rick, the fact that Lori seemed so uncomfortable even as she sat huddled next to him. It explained her distance. She was happy to see him—as happy as he was to see her—but she was in shock. She had begun to give up on him. She'd begun to try to move on. She'd started to imagine her life _without_ him. Though he was shocked to actually see her after searching for her—to believe that luck could be that much on his side—her shock would be entirely different.

And she would, no doubt, feel guilty for having given up on him. It was the same feeling that he'd gotten every time he'd realized that he let himself wonder if it was possible, at all, that she and Carl could still be alive somewhere. It was a deep feeling of guilt that you could, even just for a second, turn your back on someone you loved and lose faith in their ability to be there. Their ability to survive.

"She had every reason to believe that. Don't you ever doubt it," Rick said, doing his best to comfort Carl at the same time that he reached out to comfort Lori. He didn't want Carl, however his child mind may work, to fault Lori for telling him that he should accept his father's death. And, at the same time, he didn't want Lori to feel guilty for thinking that it was best to give up on him and it was best to help Carl move on with his life.

She hadn't done anything wrong—and Rick wanted her to know that.


End file.
